One thought on “Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future”

The following review was written with a certain amount of sleep deprivation. I should have waited to either write the review and/or post it. I say a few things that I think are more inflammatory than they should have been, I might or might not write a more coherent review / edit this one in the near future. Or not. I'll erase this preamble if I ever go through with making myself sound like less of a tard than I currently do in this review.Months ago I wrote a review where I talked about science [...]

Seems I'm not a big fan of the Edge series, in which John Brockman asks his annual question to 150 intellectual luminaries. Like so many things, the idea sounds better than its execution turns out to be. This book, for example, could be subtitled: 150 Ways to Reinterpret a Question.Which is the problem. These folks are pretty much all answering different questions. Steven Pinker, for example, a thinker I truly admire, is answering this question: Are electronic media revamping the brain's i [...]

This is the kind of book you would put in the bathroom. The question was asked, "Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?" but could just as easily asked, "How is the internet changing the way you think?" Philosophers, scientists, professors, authors, psychologists, sociologists, and plain old smarty-pants answered this question. A hundred plus articles comprise this book with the answer to this question. Some of them are dry. Some of them completely fascinating. All of their answers are uniq [...]

I picked up this book in a discount bin at The Works, which just goes to show that there’s no justice – even four years after its publication, this is still a fascinating collection of insights by some of the world’s sharpest minds, and it hasn’t aged like so many other books about the internet have. In fact, if you’re curious about the answer to the book’s titular question, there’s no better place to look.John Brockman is actually the editor of the book as well as the organiser of [...]

As someone who is constantly thinking about questions like these, I was absolutely addicted to this book. There is truly a range of opinions and perspectives in this book, some of them wildly unconventional. What's most fascinating is the fact that rather than being purely a book of informed opinion, it's a bit ethnographic in nature: the question seems to invoke a kind of description of the users' internet activity, and more importantly, their attitudes towards it. For anyone who works in this [...]

There was definitely some interesting stuff here, but like the internet itself there was just too much of it: little snippets from too many people with no discernable organization or conclusion. From an "ordinary" person's p.o.v. a lot of these people seem way too immersed in the field to speak to me in a fashion I can (a) understand or (b) trust. You know something is weird when Brian Eno's is the clearest piece on the topic. :-)

So. Firstly, not quite what I expected. I expected something more similar to journal articles rather than the more personal, anecdotal articles here. These address more than the question posed in the title; historical changes are addressed, but also deeper, implied questions that lead on from this first, how and in which ways the internet has changed thinking. (On a completely unrelated note, my IB English teacher would be so pleased. I still hear those two phrases in italics in her voice.) It a [...]

A book created from the essays written in response to the Edge question of the year, this is, as one might imagine, both fascinating and a little numbing. Essentially there are three types of response: the physiological (nothing has changed in your cortex), the cotidian (everything has changed in the way you research) or the whimsical (a musing on some philosophical element missed by options A and B). It is a question which everyone could have an answer to, but here it is essentially a group of [...]

Before reading this book, I would have answered its question—"Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?"—with an almost reflexive "Of course" (being mainly influenced by Nicholas Carr's The Shallows). Now, my answer is different.In terms of answers, this book has a lot of them (and a lot of questions too). It consists of more than 150 short essays, which are available on the Edge website. The answers vary wildly, from "The Internet is profoundly and irreversibly changing the way I think," [...]

I got a pre-publication copy of this book for free from giveaways, which explains why the pages were completely out of order and I had to use two bookmarks and do a bit of searching in order to turn the pages. Either that's what happens when you get free things, or it is a conscious response to the concerns over the ease of reading on computer screens being so unchallenging that our memory and brainpower are suffering. That would be pretty clever.These essays function as pretty good 'what not t [...]

The relevant question was posed to 150 of the world's most influential people and biggest thinkers.Essays on the destruction of precise knowledge, the consequences of infinite information, the hive mind, wired brain, and the future of Deep Thought.From Martin Rees to Alan Alda, serious thinkers pose both startling answers and puzzling questions to the dilemma of the Net.Quote: "The Internet is the infinite oscillation of our collective consciousness interacting with itself."Alda's short essay "S [...]

This book consists of numerous tiny essays on the relationships between the Internet and human thinking. The good thing is that it offers a great diversity of perspectives from various intellectuals ranging from artists to writers to mathematicians. The downside is in its format as well: the essays are so short that they only allow the introduction of ideas without further development or critical interpretation. Overall, worth reading.Update:since I am interested in gender and technology, I beca [...]

A collection of short essays from experts in a variety of fields, this book may not be for everyone, but I thought it was a fun read. You get to read responses from the likes of Clay Shirky, Steven Pinker, Brian Eno, and dozens upon dozens of others, answering the book's title question. Don't go in expecting lots of hard facts and research to back up each individual's claim though, as the essays are often more anecdotal in nature. Normally, that may bother me, but if you take the book for what i [...]

The book is a collection of essays from 150 of "today's leading thinkers" as selected by Edge. It's stated goal is to learn of "The Net's" impact on our thinking, our minds, and the future. Some of the essays are insightful, while others made me wonder why they were included. As might be expected from a book compiling 150 responses to the same question, there is both tremendous overlap and tremendous divergence in views. While you could categorize the responses into "has changed" and "hasn't cha [...]

A compendium of 150+ intellectuals, creatives, entrepreneurs, philosophers voicing their opinions on the human thought process as it is developing along-side the internet. Opinions range from positive, to negative, to uncertainty, all the while acknowledging the major impact of information overload through speed and accessibility.Rating: 4.2? - Plenty of historical opinion and intuitive insight of what may establish itself. Also how the internet affects scientific, technological, and political i [...]

Fantastic idea to put this very "hot" question to 150 very "skilled" people. The result is a broad spectre of insights and opinions, and of course not everything is relevant. But this sample has enough sensible material to form your own opinion, and in the same time to stay prudent. In my view the Internet is absolutely a great step forward for mankind. But you must not stay blind for the dangers (especially the Big-Brother-aspect) and you must search for a way to keep the use of it "controllabl [...]

This is a collection of very short essays by people from many fields (though heavy on psychology and the physical sciences, it seems) trying to make sense of the Internet revolution while we're still in the thick of it. It's a little tedious if you try to read straight through cover to cover, and may be best enjoyed as sort of a coffee table book (but without the pretty pictures). Pick it up when you have a spare minute and read one or two entries. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic, but [...]

An interesting collection of short articles by 154 "intellectuals, scientists, artists and creative thinkers" responding to the question in the title. Many different perspectives, many different views. No definite answers, though, just a lot of different opinions. And some didn't really answer the question at all. In the end, I think the answer is maybe it has changed how we think, or maybe not. In any case, the Internet surely has changed what we think about, what we know, and how we spend our [...]

Virginia Heffernan & Daniel Haun wrote the articles I most enjoyed. Opinion, experience and style took some wide swings across the 100+ essays, which lent the book an air of the pastiche (how very internet).The book title, "Is the Internet Changing the Way You think?", belies the actual 2010 Edge question, "How is the internet changing the way you think?". It seems an important distinction. Lisa Randall's "The Plural of Anecdote is Not Data", is a great look at the titular quote. If I pull n [...]

As the book is a series of essays from different authors coming from various fields of interest, it is not easy to judge the title as whole. I really did like some of the essays, for example "Tweet me nice" from Ian and Joel Golds, "The rediscovery of fire" from Chris Anderson and "Brain candy and bad mathematics" from Mark Pagel and more, but some of the essays were far from my "attention span" and I was lured to skip them over. In the end, I read all of them, thinking that if I want to re-read [...]

Compilation of 150 essays written by an impressive list of great minds, mostly scientists. All essays (1-4 pages) try to answer the title question of the book. Very inspirational essays, although somewhere halfway the book more or less all arguments and answers have been mentioned and you'll find yourself reading more of the same.

This is a collection of short - often very short - essays. As always in collections such as this, some essays are stronger than others. Probably the Brian Eno chapter alone is worth the price of entry. But it is a provocative collection, and the ideas have been presented in a readable and conversational fashion. This is not the foundation for research but it is the trigger for thought.

Received an ARC through the giveaway. While there were some big names who wrote articles, the review copy was incorrectly bound which made reading quite a chore. I think the idea is very fascinating, but I just didn't have the time to flip back and forth searching for the end of different articles.

There were quite a few interesting (very short) essays in this book, and some interesting ideas about the internet and people. I did think that there were probably too many essays, and although written by different authors, some started to seem repetitive.

This book was comprised of a bunch of short responses to the title question. Some of them were pretty interesting, but most of the respondents were older, so I question the validity of some of the comments since younger generations use the internet differently.